Does the Cross Show How Valuable I Am?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Happy Friday everyone.

00:00:06.560 | Ethan, a podcast listener in the Middle East,

00:00:08.760 | sends us this email to ask,

00:00:10.200 | "Pastor John, does the Bible say or imply

00:00:13.040 | "that part of the message of the cross

00:00:14.680 | "is our inherent value?

00:00:17.600 | "In other words, does the price paid to redeem us

00:00:19.880 | "mean that we were worth it?

00:00:22.180 | "And if the cross tells believers about our value,

00:00:25.240 | "what about those for whom Christ did not die?

00:00:28.340 | "Are they less valuable?"

00:00:30.880 | What would you say to Ethan?

00:00:32.280 | - This kind of question has been around

00:00:36.360 | my entire adult life.

00:00:39.560 | I've been responding to this question,

00:00:43.600 | I can remember back at Bethel.

00:00:45.440 | I've been responding to this question for over 40 years.

00:00:50.440 | And I've heard people say things like,

00:00:53.880 | if you want to see how much you are worth,

00:00:57.680 | look at the price God was willing to pay for you.

00:01:02.560 | Or sometimes it comes in a little more ambiguous form,

00:01:06.320 | God don't die for trash.

00:01:08.680 | Now the response that is needed

00:01:14.480 | for each of those kinds of statements is a little different,

00:01:18.480 | but basically the same.

00:01:19.800 | The Bible does not portray the cross of Christ

00:01:27.000 | as a display of the prior value

00:01:32.000 | of what he purchased by it.

00:01:36.120 | Just the opposite.

00:01:39.160 | The cross is a display of the hopeless,

00:01:43.640 | undeserving, dirty, sinful, guilty, rebellious,

00:01:48.640 | corrupted condition of the people who were purchased.

00:01:55.100 | The magnitude of Christ's sufferings is a measure,

00:02:00.100 | not of the magnitude of my worth,

00:02:05.320 | but the magnitude of the ugliness of my sin,

00:02:09.640 | the outrage of my rebellion,

00:02:12.040 | the infinite value of the glory of God

00:02:14.840 | that my sin had defamed.

00:02:17.120 | Did God die for trash?

00:02:21.520 | The context of this statement usually signifies

00:02:26.260 | a similar misunderstanding of the meaning of the cross,

00:02:29.220 | but to respond to it requires more careful nuancing

00:02:34.220 | about the nature of man.

00:02:36.160 | The short answer is that man is not trash,

00:02:42.280 | but an amazing being in the image of God

00:02:48.820 | who has prostituted his dignity to such a degree

00:02:53.160 | that he is worse than trash.

00:02:56.040 | - Wow. - That's the short answer.

00:02:57.800 | A trashed glory is worse than trash.

00:03:02.640 | A genius turned murder is worse

00:03:06.520 | than an unintelligent person turned murder.

00:03:08.960 | The prostitution of greatness is morally worse

00:03:14.680 | than the wasting of weakness.

00:03:18.000 | Man was created in the image of God.

00:03:20.680 | This means that he had a unique potential

00:03:25.880 | for conscious, God-glorifying worship.

00:03:28.440 | This is why he was made.

00:03:31.160 | This is precisely what he lost in the fall,

00:03:35.560 | his worshiping soul vanished.

00:03:39.280 | He may still be able to invent computers

00:03:43.680 | and travel to Mars and build skyscrapers,

00:03:47.140 | but all of these are prostituted capacities

00:03:51.480 | wherever they are not done in reliance upon God

00:03:54.360 | and for the glory of God.

00:03:55.600 | And that prostitution of worshiping potential

00:03:59.920 | is worse than if he were only created

00:04:04.760 | with trash-like possibilities.

00:04:07.500 | Before Paul describes the meaning of the cross of Christ,

00:04:14.000 | he describes the catastrophic corruption

00:04:17.940 | of the greatness of man.

00:04:19.600 | Romans 3, 9, "What then?

00:04:22.220 | Are we Jews any better off?

00:04:24.300 | No, not at all, for we have already charged

00:04:28.260 | that both Jews and Greeks are under sin.

00:04:30.980 | As it is written, none is righteous.

00:04:33.740 | No, not one.

00:04:35.480 | No one understands.

00:04:36.620 | No one seeks for God.

00:04:39.040 | The ultimate evil of human sin

00:04:42.660 | is the belittling of the glory of God

00:04:45.340 | by exchanging that glory for lesser things

00:04:47.820 | and thus communicating that God is of less value

00:04:51.180 | than what he has made."

00:04:53.880 | This is what Paul meant in Romans 3, 23,

00:04:55.940 | when he said, "All have sinned and fall short of,

00:05:00.640 | or lack, lack, because we've exchanged it,

00:05:05.140 | the glory of God.

00:05:06.700 | The more you exalt the wonder of human capacities,

00:05:11.700 | the more you indict human beings as morally heinous.

00:05:18.160 | It is precisely the throwing away of our greatest dignity

00:05:24.560 | as people with capacities to know and love God

00:05:28.560 | that constitutes our lowest evil."

00:05:31.480 | It's the throwing away of the greatness

00:05:34.520 | that is the lowness of the evil

00:05:37.760 | and our loss of all inborn worth

00:05:41.280 | that we were created to use for God's glory.

00:05:45.920 | Therefore, when God sends Jesus to die for us,

00:05:50.920 | he is most emphatically not coming to pay a price

00:05:55.200 | that signals our prior innate value.

00:06:00.320 | Paul says, "While we were yet weak,

00:06:04.200 | at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.

00:06:08.160 | Scarcely will one die for a righteous person.

00:06:10.880 | Perhaps one would die for a good person.

00:06:14.940 | But God shows his love for us

00:06:17.800 | in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

00:06:22.520 | The logic of those verses is inescapably plain.

00:06:27.680 | Everything about us was undeserving of what God paid for us.

00:06:32.680 | This is the very meaning of grace.

00:06:36.440 | And if someone says, "But he didn't die for horses."

00:06:39.740 | My response is, "Horses would have been easier to die for."

00:06:45.840 | The fact that he chose to die for humans instead of animals

00:06:52.160 | is not because we were more deserving,

00:06:56.200 | but because he meant to create what he had thrown away,

00:07:01.200 | namely, what we had thrown away, namely, worshiping souls.

00:07:05.720 | Therefore, it is right to say,

00:07:08.640 | Christ did not die to respond to innate value.

00:07:13.640 | He died to create spirit-wrought value.

00:07:19.560 | Ephesians 2:10, "We are his workmanship,

00:07:25.040 | created in Christ Jesus for good works,

00:07:30.040 | which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them."

00:07:33.960 | Oh, oh, there is worth.

00:07:37.440 | There is value in the new creation

00:07:41.760 | with all of its worshiping bent.

00:07:45.800 | So my answer to Ethan's question is,

00:07:49.320 | no, the message of the cross is not our innate value.

00:07:54.600 | No, the price paid does not mean we were worth it.

00:07:58.920 | No, therefore, the cross does not testify

00:08:03.160 | to the superior innate prior value

00:08:05.760 | of the redeemed over the non-redeemed.

00:08:09.400 | Rather, the cross, number one,

00:08:12.800 | testifies to the infinite value of the glory of God.

00:08:16.200 | Number two, it testifies to the enormity of human sin

00:08:20.840 | in belittling that glory.

00:08:22.520 | And number three, it testifies to the immeasurable greatness

00:08:26.640 | of the grace of God.

00:08:29.680 | And number four, it testifies to the new creation

00:08:34.080 | that God has brought into being,

00:08:36.200 | which is a beautiful thing.

00:08:38.640 | Wow, that is a word much needed today as ever, Pastor John.

00:08:42.640 | Thank you, and thank you for the question, Ethan.

00:08:45.040 | Please keep those questions coming in.

00:08:46.360 | We are gonna break for the weekend now,

00:08:48.800 | but you can keep up with the Daily Ask Pastor John podcast

00:08:51.620 | online or through our free apps.

00:08:53.920 | For more, go to our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn

00:08:58.920 | Well, next week we celebrate Christmas,

00:09:02.440 | and leading up to the Friday celebration,

00:09:04.320 | we have a special week planned.

00:09:06.320 | And we are gonna talk with a respected historian

00:09:08.560 | about one of the most controversial figures

00:09:10.480 | of the Christmas story, Herod the Great.

00:09:13.240 | And we will also talk about the meaning of Christmas,

00:09:15.760 | and of course, we will talk about the meaning of Santa.

00:09:18.480 | It will no doubt be a very interesting week,

00:09:20.400 | and I'm looking forward to it.

00:09:21.960 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:09:23.280 | Have a wonderful weekend, and we will see you on Monday.

00:09:26.080 | (upbeat music)

00:09:28.660 | (upbeat music)

00:09:31.240 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Does the Cross Show How Valuable I Am?

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